Luciano: Ill-advised flushing leaves mess for residents

CHILLICOTHE — In the wake of a mysterious and foolish toilet flushing elsewhere in town, Melissa Carter just keeps getting dumped on.

First, a sanitary-sewer main backed up, spewing a mucky, stinky mess into three basements on Williams Drive, including hers. Later, it was discovered the clog occurred because someone in Chillicothe flushed hand towels down a toilet.

Then Carter and her neighbors discovered they’d get no help from the city’s insurer. By state law, though the city maintains sewer mains, it’s not responsible for fecal invasions.

Then Carter found out her home insurance doesn’t cover sanitary sewers. The single mom is out $7,000 from the cleanup of her finished basement. And that doesn’t include replacements and repairs, which would cost $19,000.

“I don’t have that kind of money,” she says.

As far as her policy woes, agents say she’s not alone. Many homeowners don’t take out special riders necessary to cover sewer back-up. That sort of trouble doesn’t happen every day, but when it does, it can be financially waylaying — and thoroughly disgusting.

Carter, 42, and her two sons live at 1313 W. Williams Drive. She bought the home — her first — two years ago.

On Saturday, Jan. 11, she left home about 9 a.m. She got back a few hours later to find 4 inches of wastewater in her basement.

“My eyes were watering,” she says.

Next door at 217 W. Williams Drive, Boyd Thacker noticed the sanitary sewer had reversed into his basement, as well. The mess wasn’t as bad as with Carter — but still, it was feces.

Thacker, 77, trudged upstairs to start making calls. But through a window, he noticed a truck from the Chillicothe Public Works Department. Employees were working on a sanitary sewer beneath street pavement. The mains feed into the Greater Chillicothe Sanitary District wastewater plant. Though the district is its own entity, the city maintains the sanitary-sewer mains.

Thacker says he talked to the workers, who said they were trying to unclog the main. Thacker says one worker accompanied Thacker into his garage. Thacker opened a door into the house, allowing a clear view into his basement, which was defiled by icky back-up.

“Sorry,” the worker said, according to Thacker. “That’s our fault.”

Meanwhile, no one was home at the house next door to Thacker at 209 W. Williams Drive. Owners Hassen and Ashley Drissi — along with their two kids, ages 4 years and 6 months — were away most of the day. When the family returned that evening, the couple smelled something foul. But with the youngest still in diapers, they didn’t think much of it.

By the next day, the odor had vanished. Ashley Drissi, 29, took the kids into the basement to do laundry. The basement is unfinished, so the family goes down there only to do laundry or store belongings. The kids wandered around the dry concrete floor while their mom did laundry, a process they repeated several times that day.

By the following morning, the smell had returned. With no source detected upstairs, Hassen Drissi went into the basement. The floor was dry. But as he looked closely, he spotted wet marks on cardboard storage boxes. And there were a lot of those boxes: His wife manages a clothing store, so she’d packed up a lot of clothes.

Drissi poked around the boxes, sniffing: They smelled like human waste. When the sanitary sewer backed up, it emptied back out quickly, the basement floor drying before the family returned home. However, the remnants remained in the boxes and their contents.

The same thing had happened in Carter’s and Thacker’s basement: The sewer water retreated that same day. But the damage had been done.

Thacker sustained the least loss. He cleaned up his basement himself, with a total loss of about $900.

Carter, however, had a far deeper problem. She had to call a cleaning company, which hauled out damaged beds, a TV and other items, then had to rip out the wallboard up to hip level. She has no idea where to come up with $26,000 for the cleanup, repairs and replacement.

“It’s all gone,” she says.

At the Drissi home, damage and cleanup hit $4,500. But Hassen Drissi was more upset about his kids: He says they suffered diarrhea and vomiting in days after the backup, likely from crawling and playing on the contaminated basement floor.

All three neighbors made repeated calls to the city. They were told an adjuster with the city’s insurance company would be out to assess the damage and investigate the backup. Indeed, an adjuster came out and examined the three residences.

Hassen Drissi says, “When the guy was done, I thought I was saved.”

Adds Carter, “We had hope.”

But a month ago, all three got a letter stating that the city’s insurer would pay nothing. By law, the city is not liable.

“For negligence to exist under the Illinois tort Immunity Act,” the letter stated, “the city must have notice of a potential problem with the sewer main connected to your residence and then fail to correct or repair that problem prior to your backup.”

Page 3 of 3 - The letter further stated the clog had been caused by hand towels, of an unknown source.

How did it happen? We can only guess. The sanitary lines from city dwellings run between 4 and 6 inches in diameter, while the municipal mains are 8 inches in diameter. Perhaps someone — a child? — flushed multiple hand towels down a residential toilet. Perhaps one by one the towels easily flushed through the residential pipes, yet clogged together in the main.

Whatever happened, the city isn’t legally responsible. When you think about it, the law seems harsh, but perhaps sensible: A municipality can’t prevent residents from foolhardy flushing. If so, the city would be liable for massive damages all the time, says Josh Cooper, superintendent of the Chillicothe Public Works Department.

“You’d be surprised what people will try to flush down a toilet,” he says.

About 10 to 15 times a year, reckless flushing will cause a sewer-main clog that prompts backup into homes, Cooper says. Some are worse than others, depending on things like the size of the clog and amount of flow. But the Jan. 11 backup was exceptional.

“It’s normally not as bad,” Cooper says.

All three Williams Drive residents called their home insurers. Each was told sewer back-up is covered only on policies with a rider for such coverage.

Thacker, who has weathered several different sewer problems during 44 years at the same house, took out that rider years ago. But with just $900 in damage, he’d declined to make a claim — which would’ve demanded a $500 deductible and triggered a hike in his premium.

“It wasn’t worth it,” he says.

But Carter and the Drissis didn’t realize they’d need such a rider — and they didn’t have one. That’s not unusual, in central Illinois as well as nationwide, according to local agents and industry experts. Coverage for $10,000 can run about $100 a year, plus or minus. But many homeowners decline that coverage, often because they don’t hear much about sewer backups.

But as Hassen Drissi points out, “The policy wouldn’t have stopped my kids from getting sick, from all this stuff people flush down the toilet.”

Homeowners can have a valve installed to help prevent backups. But they’re not foolproof.

Melissa Carter has learned all these options. The lesson has been expensive and frustrating.

“I saved up for this house,” she says, frowning as she looks around her ravaged basement. “And now there’s nothing.”

PHIL LUCIANO is a Journal Star columnist. He can be reached at pluciano@pjstar.com, facebook.com/philluciano, 686-3155 or (800) 225- 5757, Ext. 3155. Follow him on Twitter @LucianoPhil.